$100 Million Investment Aims to Ease Health Worker Shortage

By Robert Preidt and Robin Foster
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Oct. 15, 2021 (HealthDay News) — The National Health Service Corps will obtain $100 million to assist deal with the U.S. well being care employee scarcity, the White House introduced Thursday.

That’s a five-fold improve in funding from earlier years for a program that helps discover main care docs for communities that wrestle to recruit and preserve them, in response to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, NBC News reported.

In alternate for a lot of years of offering care in areas that lack well being care suppliers, docs are provided mortgage repayments and scholarships.

“COVID has principally induced a laser concentrate on the obtrusive gaps and dysfunction throughout the American well being care system,” Tener Veenema, a scholar targeted on workforce points at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security, advised NBC News. “Making investments to redistribute well being care suppliers into rural areas, low-resourced areas, is so essential as a result of we all know how a lot they’re affected by a scarcity of entry to good well being care.”

The newest statistics bear that out: The United States misplaced 17,500 well being care employees in September, and 524,000 for the reason that begin of the pandemic, in response to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Whether you are in rural America, or in a low-income a part of America, that should not be a purpose why you may’t entry good high quality well being care,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra advised NBC News. “And so we need to assist states which might be going to attempt to do what they’ll to maintain that public well being workforce in these rural communities, these low-income communities, they’re the place individuals want them.”

States will have the ability to apply for grants till April and the HHS predicts it’s going to grant as much as 50 awards as excessive as $1 million per 12 months over the course of 4 years.

“With these funds, states can design applications that optimize the collection of disciplines and repair areas, and tailor the size of service commitments to handle the areas of best want of their communities,” Diana Espinosa, performing administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees this system, advised NBC News. “This funding will make an amazing impression on entry to main care and addressing well being disparities at a vital time.”

The mission does not launch till September 2022, so it will not have a right away impact on the well being employee scarcity, however will assist in the long term, NBC News reported.

More data

Visit the American Association of Medical Colleges for extra on the nursing scarcity.

SOURCE: NBC News